I have to say, it’s been a long time since I felt like the Democrats did anything politically savvy, but I think running with the recent re-branding of Rush Limbaugh as the head of the GOP qualifies. Incredibly both Fox and the Huffington Post seem almost to agree on the substance of the story: the GOP is currently in disarray, and searching for leadership. The dittohead masses that follow Limbaugh are a big enough voting bloc that the party’s current nominal spokesmen cannot be seen to oppose him too much outright, lest he savage them from his bully pulpit.
Tag: politics
Shared Links for Mar 2nd
- Long Beach’s State Senator Lowenthal Takes on Parking Requirements – Wow, how awesome would this be? Massive state wide overhaul of our insane parking requirements? Will be interesting to see the vote… (tagged: parking transportation policy california )
- Report on HR 801, Fair Copyright in Research Works Act | MAPLight.org – MAPLight takes a look at campaign financing in the context of HR 801 (that Conyers bill) which would prohibit the federal government from requiring open access to publications arising from publicly funded scientific research (along the lines of what is currently required for the NIH). Bill sponsors on the house judiciary committee got, on average, about twice what non-sponsors got. My rep, Adam Schiff got $6,000, which is more than the average contribution to sponsors. (tagged: politics transparency openaccess science )
- Welcome to the Future – An essay by Bruce Schneier, on the immediacy of panopticon style surveillance. All the technology is in place, it just needs to stitched together at the edges. In typical human style, we're going to bumble headlong into the mess, it seems. I'm not as sure as he is that it's ultimately bad for us though – when we lived in tribes and villages, privacy was rare. This transparency will, I think, only be a disaster if we can't watch those in power just as well. (tagged: technology privacy transparency surveillance )
- Livable Streets Education – Curricula and lesson plans for teaching Livable Streets topics in K-8 classrooms. Currently being used in NY, but available online for anyone, anywhere. (tagged: transportation green education open )
- A Brighter Shade of Green – A good essay on what it means to be "bright green", politically and philosophically. (tagged: green sustainability environment philosophy politics )
Shared Links for Feb 28th
- Short Term Investing – A gleeful satire of what really, truly ails Wall Street, and capitalism in general: grotesquely short term thinking. (tagged: investing finance money bailout satire )
- MBARI finds fish with a transparent head – This thing is beyond weird. If we're still discovering things like this on Earth, how can we hope to even imagine what extraterrestrial organisms would be like? (tagged: fish biology science video weird alien ocean evolution )
- The Kessler Syndrome – Another example of unsustainable behavior, without forethought on our parts? The recent collision of two satellites is causing some to wonder if we might be getting close to the threshold at which the debris from such collisions begets more collisions, and more debris, in a runaway process rendering low earth orbit useless for satellites. (tagged: space sustainability non-linear kessler imapcts )
- Zeitgeist – The Movie – Have not seen these movies. Some of what the summaries say is interesting, but other parts sound utterly bogus. Curious from a memetic point of view if nothing else… (tagged: movie film zeitgeist economics religion politics money war )
- Boston Dynamics (DARPA) BIGDOG Robot – BigDog is a DARPA funded quadripedal robot capable of climbing over a pile of cinderblocks, walking on slippery ice, scaling dunes and snow covered hillsides, taking a big shove from the side, and jumping over a designated obstacle. When do we get to send one of these guys to Mars? (tagged: robot youtube darpa mars military video research technology )
Shared Links for Feb 26th
- Zombie Bank Monster Mash – An animated monster mash, starring our bailed out financial "industry" (or is it just a lobby now?). Sadly Mark Fiore seems unwilling to implicate the current administration in the continuing mess. (tagged: cartoon zombie finance bailout banks economics politics geithner )
- No, Wait! You Got It Backwards! – Well, so much for any hint of "change" in the administration's policies toward the banking industry. The Treasury's plans to buy convertible preferred shares in the banks is completely backwards – giving a put option to the banks, instead of getting a call option in exchange for the risky investment. Taxpayers are guaranteed to be screwed. (tagged: treasury banks bailout geithner obama economics finance )
- The Case Against Home Ownership – An infrequently made point in the US: owning is often more expensive, and less convenient, than renting… and that's even before you account for the massive government incentives that have been put in place since WWII to encourage people to buy their own place. People frequently look at me like I'm crazy when I suggest we should just live close to where we work as a way to avoid the expenses of driving, or the inconveniences of (bad) public transit. (tagged: subsidy transportation housing economics suburbia planning taxes )
- Copenhagen to continue Copenhagenizing – Denmark's take on "economic stimulus": massive investments in public transit and bike infrastructure. In a nation of 5 million, they're committing $16 billion over the next 10 years, which is about $1/day per person (which is less than 1/5 what the average US family spends on their automobiles) Regional rail, intra-city light rail. Bike lanes and paths. Road pricing for drivers. Etc, etc. I'm glad someone is setting a good example. It will be interesting to see how the world responds to Copenhagen later this year, when the next round of climate talks takes place. I can't think of a better city to represent my hopes for the future. (tagged: transportation politics copenhagen bicycle rail denmark stimulus )
- NYPD fires rookie cop caught on YouTube video bashing bicyclist – Last fall a cyclist was body checked off their bike by a cop in the midst of a Times Square Critical Mass ride. Said event was recorded via cameraphone. Cop perjured himself in official report, claiming cyclist ran into him intentionally. Video viewed on YouTube 2 million times. Cop now unemployed and facing 4 years in prison for assault, falsifying documents. Sometimes we win. Makes me want to record just about everything. (tagged: bicycle police transparency youtube )
Shared Links for Feb 19th
- Tinkering School – An awesome experiential school, at which kids are allowed to do dangerous things with power tools, in the name of learning to create things that work, and how to deal with frustration and failure. (tagged: education design ted school tinker )
- Interactive Atlas of the World's Endangered Languages – Most of the world's surviving human languages (of which there are currently about 6000) will go extinct in my lifetime. Here's a map of where they are, who speaks them, and what they're called. (tagged: language extinct culture human atlas maps )
- Mo(NU)mentum: a future urban drill core – A hypothetical drill core from the future, showing urban sediment through the ages: stone, to brick, to concrete, to asphalt, and finally plastic. Ever more refined and energy intensive materials, in thinner and thinner layers, until the present, at which… we note… sedimentation stopped. (tagged: art green construction urban )
- Final CA Budget Cuts Gas Tax Increase, Still Nothing for Transit – Happy St. Fuckers day: the republican senator from Orange County finds sales and income taxes more acceptable than gas taxes. All state funding for public transit nixed. Gas to remain cheap. What a crock. (tagged: streetsblog california politics energy transportation taxes )
- Los Angeles Bike Summit March 7th, 2009 – Los Angeles Bike Summit! Networking cyclists and bike advocacy organizations. Being put on by the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. (tagged: bicycle advocacy los angeles bike transportation )
Shared Links for Feb 12th – Feb 15th
- Simon Johnson of the IMF on the ongoing financial bailouts – Simon Johnson works for the IMF, and what he sees in the US approach to its financial crisis is much more similar to say, Indonesia or Russia, than a "normal" developed world economic mess. He sees a clash between the government, and an oligarchy, in which currently, the oligarchy is winning. Hopefully we'll get our act together here… as the IMF isn't going to be stepping in anytime soon. (tagged: financial economy pbs moyers crisis economics politics geithner imf )
- Bicycling's Into the Wild – Screw school, ride your bike into the forest and disappear. Almost sounds like me! Except instead of racing, I got into… grad school. Uh, hmm. (tagged: bicycle nytimes touring wilderness )
- Roubini, Taleb, Marx, Lenin, and Python – Indeed, asking Taleb and Roubini for stock tips is like asking Karl Marx who won the English Football Cup in 1949. (tagged: roubini taleb montypython krugman economy blackswan finance )
- The Orange Line Bike Path Buck Stops…Where? – Apparently there's a bikeway that parallel's the Orange Line bus rapid transit in the Valley. Who knew! Not the contractors who were paid $160,000 to maintain it, as it turns out. (tagged: ladot bike bicycle transportation bureaucracy )
- Whither the War on Drugs under Kerlikowske? – Wouldn't it be nice to have a sane drug policy? Seattle's notoriously reasonable police chief has been nominated to the position of Drug Czar. I wonder if the Senate will confirm him? (tagged: drugs marijuana obama politics war seattle kerlikowske czar )
Shared Links for Feb 11th – Feb 12th
- Getting Traffic Signals to Detect Bicycles – A short presentation on how induction loop traffic sensors work, and how to maximize your chances of being detected as a cyclist… and also how to make sure your sensors can detect cyclists, if you're a transportation engineer! (tagged: bicycle bike cycling transportation technology induction sensor loop )
- Tweet-a-Watt, A twittering power meter – Now if only somebody would make these things work out of the box, instead of requiring a soldering iron… (tagged: energy technology twitter green )
- China Needs U.S. Guarantees for Treasuries – Huh? What's a "treasury guarantee", and why would it be any more trustworthy than the promise to repay the debt implicit in any bond? Probably what they really mean is "Um, we're not really planning on buying any more of your Govt. debt, thanks. At least, certainly not at the pitiful interest rates you're currently offering." And so the Fed will "buy" it instead. I think this is called "quantitative easing" in doublespeak. Also known as printing money… (tagged: finance economy china federal reserve economics )
- Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants? – Good, if somewhat superficial and dismissive, look at big power versus small power. I really hope Amory Lovins is correct. (tagged: energy policy efficiency economics lovins renewable )
- Stimulus Bill Is Anti-Religious – Man, I *wish* the ACLU had drafted the stimulus bill! What's wrong exactly is prohibiting the use of federal funds for building religious institutions? Why would this not fall under separation of church and state? (tagged: politics religion stimulus huckabee conservative )
I Was the Victim of a Series of Accidents
Kurt Klein “wonders how liberals rationalize a Secretary of the Treasury who cheated on his taxes ($34,000–oops! rounding error)”. Well, here’s how I would do it. Not that I’d necessarily want to be called a liberal:
Shared Links for Fri, Feb 6th, 2009 through Sat, Feb 7th, 2009
- Overcoming Obstacles to U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change – Guidelines from the Brookings Institute for the US and China to cooperatively address climate change and clean energy issues, without being combative. Executive summary sounds good, whole thing is 80 pages long. Given the positive economics for many energy efficiency measures, I thought there should have been a little more focus on the often erroneous assumption that addressing these issues has to be costly. (tagged: energy sustainability china policy climate efficiency brookings )
- Amendment to Eliminate Bike Infrastructure in Stimulus – DeMint (R – SC) and Coburn (R – OK) are trying to kill all bike infrastructure investment in the stimulus package. Call them and your own senators and make sure it doesn't happen! (tagged: politics bicycle infrastructure policy transportation stimulus )
- The Transparent Society – The essay that later became Brin's book of the same name, in which he argues that first, universal surveillance is coming, whether we like it or not, and second, that a world which is transparent – in which surveillance goes both (all) ways, is vastly preferable to one in which the illusion of privacy is maintained, and the powerful are the only ones with access to our information. (tagged: technology privacy transparency surveillance brin wired )
- Make Love Not Porn – Hardcore (esp. internet) porn has unfortunately come (ha!) to substitute for sex-ed in our culture, so says Cindy Gallop. I think she has a point. And so she made this website, to try and point out the flawed generalizations that one might arrive at from being "educated" by online porn. I think it's worth noting also though, that the diversity of pornography on the web has steadily increased over time, and there's a lot of positive and realistic, and non-exploitive depiction of sex out there now, if you want to look for it. In particular Abby Winters, Beautiful Agony, and I Shot Myself come to mind. It's ironic (absurd?) that the site has an "18+ only" clickthrough on the front page. (tagged: porn sex love ted education )
- Dept. of Energy to draft energy efficiency rules… 30 years late. – I can't believe I'd never heard of this. Apparently for the last 30 years, presidents have been refusing to direct the Dept. of Energy to draft enforceable energy efficiency regulations, despite being directed under law to do so by Congress. Finally in 2005, 14 states sued, and won, and Bush still failed to comply in a timely manner. How many other instances of the executive branch (both democrat and republican!) completely ignoring Congress on important issues are there? It's rare enough that Congress gets anything right – that the president should ignore them when they do is unconscionable! (tagged: politics policy energy nytimes green efficiency standards regulation )
Ideas for Change in America
Change.org is a kind of public idea tourament. There are a bunch of different subsections: agricultural policy, government reform, energy, etc. Readers vote and comment on the ideas, and the top few ideas in each category advance to the next round. Larry Lessig has submitted Citizen Funding of Congressional Elections whereby only public money and small contributions can be applied toward election campaigns.
Not sure how well this kind of system can work. Many of the highest rated ideas don’t sound very productive…